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July's People

3.51 of 5 stars 3.51 · rating details · 2,139 ratings · 152 reviews

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

For years, it had been what is called a �deteriorating situation.” Now all over South Africa the cities are battlegrounds. The members of the Smales family—liberal whites—are rescued from the terror by their servant, July, who leads them to refuge in his village. What happens to the Smaleses and to July—the shifts in character and re...more

Paperback, Reprint, 160 pages

Published July 29th 1982 by Penguin Books (first published 1981)

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Apr 28, 2010 K.D. Oliveros rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to K.D. by: 501 Must Read Books, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (20

Shelves: 1001-core

This novel is my 95th book in my quest to read all the 1,021 individual books included in the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die - 2010 edition. I read somewhere that if you really get the very basic plot of all stories already written, they can be grouped into just a handful or so. I think this is true. Reading July's People made me remember the following novels (most of these are also 1001 books):

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou - because July's People is anti-apartheid too...more

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Jun 08, 2011 Emma rated it 5 of 5 stars

you guys, this is a badass book. i actually think it would be an interesting companion piece to "home," because it is also about whiteness and racial constructions (among other things) as expressed through interpersonal relationships. but whereas home left me feeling sort of weepy and moved, "july's people" left me feeling incredibly tense and out of sorts.

the story is set in rural South Africa, where the white, upper-class, liberal Smales family has fled to temporary safety with the help of the...more

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Nov 11, 2008 Brian rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2008, nobel

South Africa becomes a battleground. Armed militants are fighting in all of the cities. The Smales, a liberal white family, escape with the aid of their servant and hide out in his village. That’s where the real battle of this book begins. The roles of ‘servant’ and ‘master’ slowly transform. Tension builds within the Smales as a shift in characters shimmers like the heat rising above the veldt. What surprised me the most was the change in the children.

Gordimer’s writing style took a little eff...more

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Dec 27, 2012 Karen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

When this book was written, no one knew what the outcome of the struggle for freedom in South Africa would be. The apartheid government was intransigent, white supremacists were calcified with fear, black resentment boiled over and townships burned. Gordimer's short novel was not speculative or apocalyptic, but a likely scenario given the trajectory of events. The fact that this future didn't come to pass is miraculous. Today, the world hangs on reports of Nelson Mandela's health and activities...more

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Nov 09, 2012 Zulu rated it 4 of 5 stars

Okay, switching gears from "women who need to get married or they will end up destitute", here's a book from the more postcolonial end of the pile.

July's People is set during the apartheid uprisings in South Africa, during the early 1980s, and one thing I really realized as I read was how ignorant I am about what all was going on at that point. I remember studying it in school a bit (there was a movie with Kalvin Klein with a South African accent...?). The only other source of my information has...more Okay, switching gears from "women who need to get married or they will end up destitute", here's a book from the more postcolonial end of the pile.

July's People is set during the apartheid uprisings in South Africa, during the early 1980s, and one thing I really realized as I read was how ignorant I am about what all was going on at that point. I remember studying it in school a bit (there was a movie with Kalvin Klein with a South African accent...?). The only other source of my information has been Bryce Courtney novels, specifically The Power Of One, which is so white-knighty and Gary Stuish that you have to take it with a grain of salt. Also it's set much earlier than July's People, so.

So, during the revolution, July, a servant for a white family, rescues them by taking them away from the city to his village. As the novel progresses, the white family starts to lose more and more privilege/implied power as they realize that they aren't as liberal as they always considered themselves, and they are entirely within July's power and can only live there on his sufferance.

I found the subtle balance of power to be very effective in this book. Maureen grew up with black servants; her husband Bam seems not to have (?). Their three kids have only ever known July as their caretaker. As the book opens, the white family has money, a gun, a vehicle, and supplies hastily taken from the city. They're scared, and willing to take July's help as he leads them to his village, but they feel in charge. At first it's like a camping expedition, not an escape. But as time passes, July becomes more and more important. This is shown through several different POVs, but Maureen especially is stunned and uneasy about the gradual change. Only July can show his face in the nearby market town, so he needs control of the vehicle for shopping. The family's supplies run out and they must depend on the villagers, July's family, for food. The white children make friends and begin to adopt the black children's modes of politeness, and even start to pick up the language, where Maureen and Bam are helpless without July to translate. Then, at the end, Bam's gun is stolen. It's been building for a while, but his complete loss of self and personhood is very much tied to having a gun, even a little one-shot shotgun. July refuses to help him look for it, and they know they can't do anything without July. July is in charge. Near the end of the book, the narration switches to calling him Mwawate, his real name, and this is the final symbol of his power and personhood and independence. Very powerful stuff.

Not much happens in the book--the family is stuck in the village, with one excursion to meet the chief--so on the whole it's very internal. Maureen and Bam's feeling of being trapped and helpless is emphasized by the occasional switch into July's wife's POV and his mother's POV, as they note that the white family is taking up a good rondavel, that they don't know how to do their own thatching, that they can't even pick the simplest plants without nearly poisoning themselves. The white family are bumbling intruders endured for July's sake. Their children are considered unmannered barbarians. Even when they try to help--Maureen tries harvesting and Bam builds a water tank--it's depicted as awkward and unwelcome.

Gordimer also gets at the complexity of the situation through a flashback to Maureen's childhood. She had a black woman as her servant, and one day they were photographed by a journalist who used the picture in a magazine to depict apartheid. But from the narrator's POV (a subtly more external third person than most of the book), Maureen and Lily's relationship is accepted by both as being what it is; they like, perhaps love, each other; they don't have a conception of why or how they're being used as an example of something terrible.

I really enjoyed reading this book, but there are places where I suspect it was too subtle for me--I'm sure I missed nuances. The prose wasn't always clear, but that might be on me, not on Gordimer. The ending was difficult. The true ending was the moment July refused to help them find the gun, because it was the end of the arc of the power struggle. The moments when the children are shown integrating into the village language and culture are also important. But there's another chapter because: the white family is still there! Their physical movement arc is incomplete: they ran away, but it's clear they cannot stay away. So there's a bit of a confusing ending where Maureen sees a helicopter land and runs to them, perhaps for help, although it's never said who's in the helicopter or whether they'd be friendly to her and her family. It's an ambiguous ending, doubtless on purpose, but also an awkward one because it was divorced from the novel's central theme for me.

All in all, this book made me feel ignorant, in the good way, if that makes sense. Like there are stories I don't know that I would like to know. So I guess when I'm finished this hundred books, it'll be time for another hundred books!(less)

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Jul 02, 2012 Daniel Bullen rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a post-apocalyptic scenario about a civil war that might have arisen out of apartheid in South Africa. A man and his wife and three children are taken in by their black servant, who takes them back to his village in the veld. But under the strain of this new situation, the old roles of master and servant unravel and the characters struggle to keep their old civil relationship alive in a deteriorating situation.

The brilliance of July's People (the title refers to the whites as much as to...more

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May 22, 2012 David McDannald rated it 4 of 5 stars

July's People is an elegant book by a Nobel Laureate. During the uprising in South Africa, a rich white family hides in the village of their servant, July. And the drama comes through reversal, as July slowly takes on the roll of master. My one complaint in reading the book for the second time (and after having spent years in Africa) was that from the details it didn't seem that Gordimer had actual experience in the kind of village she was writing about. She writes with enough authority for it n...more

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May 14, 2010 Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly rated it 3 of 5 stars

I have read about a third already of Alessandro Manzoni's "The Betrothed" (I Promessi Sposi) when I felt I needed a change of scenery and randomly picked up this book and started reading it. As it turned out, I even finished it ahead of "The Betrothed". The story is about a white family of five, fleeing the violence at Johannesburg, South Africa, aided by their longtime black houseboy named July.

The family left their house in the city hurriedly. The blacks (comprising the majority of South Afric...more I have read about a third already of Alessandro Manzoni's "The Betrothed" (I Promessi Sposi) when I felt I needed a change of scenery and randomly picked up this book and started reading it. As it turned out, I even finished it ahead of "The Betrothed". The story is about a white family of five, fleeing the violence at Johannesburg, South Africa, aided by their longtime black houseboy named July.

The family left their house in the city hurriedly. The blacks (comprising the majority of South Africa's population) got fed up with the long, oppressive minority white rule in that country and started the revolt aided by fellow blacks from other African countries including some Cuban mercenaries. It was therefore blacks against whites. No distinction. So even if July's white people were liberals and had treated blacks (including July) kindly, they were still in grave danger simply because of the color of their skin.

The family were able to take very little with them (when the wife had her menstruation, she had to wear rags as she had no sanitary napkins). Among these were a single book which the wife was afraid to read at once because if she finishes reading it, she'll have nothing else to read anymore. Which book was this? Manzoni's "The Betrothed"! A delightful coincidence, willed by the gods, but apparently without any meaning or use (except, perhaps, for my brief amusement).

Anyway, maybe it was for the purpose of creating a contrast, to help me find something to say in this review! "The Betrothed", a historical tale of 17th century Milan (Italy), even if long, is easy to comprehand. "July's People", though only about less than a fourth of "The Betrothed's" length, has passages like this:

"The human creed...depended on validities staked on a belief in the absolute nature of intimate relationships between human beings. If people don't experience emotional satisfaction and deprivation in the same way, what claim can there be for equality of need? There was fear and danger in considering this emotional absolute as open in any way; the brain-weighers, the claimants of divine authority to distinguish powers of moral discernment from the degree of frizz in hair and conceptual ability from the relative thickness of lips--they were vigilant to pounce upon anything that could be twisted to give them credence."

But there is suspense from the beginning to the end as Nadine Gordimer, a Nobel Prize winner, masterfully kept up the atmosphere of fear and danger all throughout. And it wasn't easy to do this because, except for some ambiguous men in a helicopter which landed in July's village towards the end, there were no bad men actually chasing or shooting anybody here. The fear, tension and sense of danger were all psychological: inside the head of the white couple as they try to keep themselves and their three small children out of harm's way.(less)

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Feb 08, 2010 Shannon rated it 4 of 5 stars

I found this book to be very original in both the content and the way the story unfolded. The wonderful writing really helped me relate to what the main characters were experiencing. The transitions were so subtle and fluid throughout--Bam and Maureen morphed seamlessly as their circumstances grew more desperate. The only real flaw I found with the story was in the father, Bam. His transition did not feel quite as smooth and believable as that of his wife and children. I love the way this novel...more

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Jul 28, 2009 Stephen rated it 4 of 5 stars

The relationship between “Master” and “Boy” in the changing South Africa of the late 70’s is explored with great and disturbing insight in this novel by the 1991 Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer. A white Johannesburg family flees the black uprising that is spreading from Soweto with an African “boy” who has served them for fifteen years. They are transported to their servant’s village where they confront the other half of his life, the African half, which they had never seen nor fully acknowle...more

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Jul 22, 2009 Robert Cooper rated it 5 of 5 stars

Novelist Nadine Gordimer, a South African, won the Nobel Prize in 1991. July’s People is about a liberal Afrikaaner couple who, with their four children, escape the urban violence of the early 80s by hiding in the village of the African man, July, who has been their servant for fifteen years. The entire book is set in the native village, and focuses on the intricacies of role reversal and the complexities of the master-servant and white-black relationships: subjects Gordimer handles with great...more

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Jul 06, 2012 Bettie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: summer-2012, tbr-busting-2012, published-1981, afr-s-africa, african-continent, nobel-laureate

Opening Quote: The old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum there arises a great diversity of morbid symptons - Antonio Gramsci 'Prison Notebooks'

Opening:

You like to have some cup of tea?-
July bent at the doorway and began that day for them as his kind has always done for their kind.

My first Nadine Gordimer and it has been lounging around the shelves for quite a while. Won't I just kick myself if her ouevre happens to be the best thing since sliced bread. Anyhow, it fits in...more

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Jan 29, 2010 Shelley rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-list, read-2010, african

It took me several kick-starts to get into this book as the prose demanded complete focus. Gordimer's writing style made it hard to figure out who was saying what. There was a very different sort of rhythm to it, and once I adapted I got into the story.

It's about a white family escaping a fictional civil war in South Africa to live with July (their man servant). The role reversal that results in his village is what makes this book so interesting.

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Jan 15, 2010 Tony rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is basically a role-reversal story, a "Trading Places", about rich, liberal whites being forced to live amongst poor blacks in Apartheid-era South Africa. It is set during a fictional civil war, and Gordimer wisely in my opinion pretty much leaves it at that in regards to the war. The war is simply the impetus for the character story she wants to explore. Even better she really focuses most of this story on two characters, Maureen Smales, the rich white wife, and July, the Smales' black ser...more

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Jun 22, 2009 Nikki rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, guardian-1000-novels

At the time July's People was written, the scenario Nadine Gordimer imagines was one possible future for South Africa. Nelson Mandela was still imprisoned on Robben Island, and occasional riots and uprisings among black South Africans had been quelled by the superior firepower of the apartheid government. South Africa was beginning to feel increasingly alone in the world, with international calls for economic sanctions increasing, and African, Soviet and Cuban governments seeming ready to aid th...more At the time July's People was written, the scenario Nadine Gordimer imagines was one possible future for South Africa. Nelson Mandela was still imprisoned on Robben Island, and occasional riots and uprisings among black South Africans had been quelled by the superior firepower of the apartheid government. South Africa was beginning to feel increasingly alone in the world, with international calls for economic sanctions increasing, and African, Soviet and Cuban governments seeming ready to aid the anti-apartheid forces with weapons.

When July's People opens, Bam and Maureen Smales and their three children have just arrived in a native village of round mud huts with thatched roofs -- the home village of their long-time servant, July. He has guided them there, with Bam driving overland in his "bakkie" (apparently a pickup truck with a canopy and seats) because their home in suburban Johannesburg is threatened by civil war. The "Azanians" now have real weapons, supplied by Cuba and other black African nations, and July, who doesn't want any part of the fighting, has helped them escape it.

At first the Smales family is completely disoriented; the children ask for ice cream or new toys and don't understand why they can't have them. As they all become more accustomed to their new life, the children acclimate quickly and make friends with the black children. Bam and Maureen have a harder time adjusting. They have always prided themselves on being liberals, treating their servants better than most of their neighbors do. They have supported black liberation movements with money and by attending rallies. But as the power dynamic is reversed, they begin to realize how deeply ingrained the taint of racism and colonialism is, both in themselves and in July.

The Smales arrived in July's village with three pieces of "white man's" technology -- a battery-powered radio, the bakkie, and a shotgun. Each day they turn on the radio for news, but they don't really trust the government-run radio station for the truth; yet they fear even more the "burst of martial music" that would herald a rebel victory. Instead, there comes a day when there is only static, and the radio becomes just another useless artifact of their former life, like the other broken bits of stuff from their home in the suburbs that July has brought back to the village, and which are saved because his family has so little material wealth. Slowly, the vehicle becomes July's when a young man teaches him to drive it; when the same young man takes the shotgun and goes to join the rebels, they feel more and more helpless. Through this process they come to realize how much white privilege they have taken for granted.

I tend to prefer books with happy endings, or at least some redemption and resolution. But the inconclusive ending Gordimer has fashioned for July's People is the only right way to end this story, for at the time it was written no one knew what the ending would be. In real life, the work of de Klerk and Mandela averted the full-scale civil war that Gordimer imagined in this book. But South Africa continues to deal with the same issues that plagued the Smales family and their servant July.(less)

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Jan 21, 2009 Gaelyn rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read this book on racism in South Africa while I was in Honduras. It was sitting on my host family's shelf. I was always struck by the absurdity that I was in Central America but my mind was instantly transported into the world of a white wealthy family hiding out in the home of their servant.

I had never heard of this book before, nor had it been recommended, but I would suggest it to anyone. Fascinating, and I still think about it.

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Apr 09, 2012 Shana rated it 4 of 5 stars

One of my hand's down favorite bookstores is McNally Jackson. It is certainly my favorite bookstore to spend time in. The employees are so knowledgeable and passionate about books, and the environment is so inviting. I go in there, and I always get this palpable thrill, and this wonderful anxious desire to read all the books in the store. It's a little bit of heaven, one you have to visit if you are in NYC.

I mention McNally Jackson because they have a few ongoing book clubs, and the main book cl...more One of my hand's down favorite bookstores is McNally Jackson. It is certainly my favorite bookstore to spend time in. The employees are so knowledgeable and passionate about books, and the environment is so inviting. I go in there, and I always get this palpable thrill, and this wonderful anxious desire to read all the books in the store. It's a little bit of heaven, one you have to visit if you are in NYC.

I mention McNally Jackson because they have a few ongoing book clubs, and the main book club, run by Ms. McNally herself, had this as their selection for April. I've been looking for ways to get out and meet new and interesting people, something that is difficult to do in the best of situations once you are a grownup but something that seems even more difficult in a city like NYC. People are friendly here, and you have lots of interesting and fabulous chance encounters, but they so rarely amount to more than a one-off conversation. I'm trying to get past that, hence the book club attendance.

I read this book not only because it was a book club selection. After all, I'm not one to follow the crowd except inasmuch as people who refuse to follow a crowd comprise their own crowd--a very large crowd in New York. I decided this would be a good month to attend because I'd never read Nadine Gordimer, and the book jacket had an interesting enough description. Besides, I do have a love of books about or set in Africa, especially about whites in Africa. I guess it's something to do with the tension of feeling like a place is your home but knowing in some fundamental ways that it's really not yours because it is something your ancestors have taken and stolen. There's a sense in which I feel a kind of kinship with white Africans of European descent. Their home, the only one they’ve known, is not really theirs; it’s the only place they belong but it’s a place they know they do not, in some very real ways, belong. Perhaps I am projecting, but it’s a feeling I’ve had, so I think that’s why I am fascinated. Their drama is mine on a much larger and more life-and-death scale, and I think that’s one of the reasons we read novels—to see ourselves and our lives reflected back at us in a way we can begin to make sense of.

This novel was one that I saw myself reflected in, quite frankly, in ways that were sometimes discomforting. In fact, discomfort was definitely the theme of the evening at the book discussion; this novel left very many people discomforted. It was described by one lovely woman as claustrophobic, and there’s something apt in that. However, the novel is also stunningly beautiful in its language and in its portrayal of people whose lives have been totally upended in such a way as to become unrecognizable.

The language, in fact, was one of the standout stars for me. It was sometimes melodic and poetic and other times jagged and broken. In a way that I think very much mimics poetry, Gordimer uses the words and syntax of the sentences themselves as reflections of the atmosphere and the characters’ feelings. The language is at the heart of the tension and claustrophobia, but it also brings into focus so much that is usually, as another attendee put it, at the periphery. There’s a tense scene late in the book, for example, where a woman is running through the bush, but instead of concentrating on her or her feelings, the author draws our attention to the details in nature. Furthermore, everything is so compressed, so succinct. More than once the author conveys big feelings, big ideas in very few words, and it isn’t just the word choice but the arrangement of the words that makes the language so powerful.

This is a short, beautiful, discomforting book. If that is something you can handle, this book is well worth your time.(less)

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Jan 09, 2010 Jay rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Nina

I have to admit that I honestly did not expect to enjoy this book. I began 'My Son's Story' when I was quite young and didn't enjoy it to such an extent that it was one of the rare books I put back down without finishing. Enjoying this book as much as I am now, I suspect, in hindsight, that perhaps there is a level of maturity that is required to read Gordimer's work which an 11 year old simply does not have.
The book is more about power and the loss of it and it's reversal than it is about the...more

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Sep 22, 2012 Garth rated it 2 of 5 stars

A gripping idea for a plot: in a fictional 1980s South Africa, blacks violently overthrow the Apartheid government and a wealthy white couple is forced to go into hiding in the village of July, their former housekeeper. Most of the novel is based on the change in power structures: the wealthy white couple go from being all-powerful employers to being completely dependent on the generosity of July and his village.

Unfortunately, Gordimer's characters are not very interesting and her writing is fre...more

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May 06, 2013 Nicholas Dummer rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is the densest prose I have ever read. It is poetry. This created a very unique tone, tense and cautious. I have not felt a tone quite its equal. The story itself is slightly remarkable as a testament to the time in which it was written; during the Apartheid in South Africa by a native. The relationship between even amiable opposing forces was so strained and broken, it is hard to imagine others without such strong bonds of historical attachment being anything but painful and violent. It is...more

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Feb 12, 2013 Mohammad Z rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Just finished reading this book for my Literature class and thought it was really great! The book is set during a fictional civil war after Apartheid fell where the black S.Africans are rebelling against the White S.Africans. One thing I found interesting was how each character adapted to the situation. Bam, for example, was able to 'afford' to give up his status and money for awhile while he was in the village. Maureen, on the other had, is not able to understand that her life will never be the...more

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Nov 14, 2012 Andrew added it

Shelves: subsaharan-african-fiction

For whatever reason, I've become friends with a fair number of white South Africans lately. And while they are all deeply regretful of the apartheid era, there is a sort of tension there, a feeling that despite their modern, liberal attitudes, a lot is being unsaid to me, the outsider, about the issue of race.

And Gordimer, writing at the height of the apartheid era, was able to crack just that. Our primary characters are decent white people who suddenly find themselves in unfamiliar terrain. And...more

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Jul 17, 2012 Greg rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is definitely worth reading. Written years before the end of apartheid, Gordimer deftly explores the dynamics of master-subordinate relationships as they change, in a very depressing way. The action follows the Smales family and their previous servant, July, as they flee to rural South Africa following an anti-apartheid insurrection. The Smales, by all accounts, appear to have been a liberal and good family. July begins the book by serving and rescuing them. He becomes their escape and...more

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Mar 03, 2012 Chum rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction, nobel-authors

Initially, I had found the South African dialects, words, and phrases confusing/distracting, once I got into the story, that was forgotten or perhaps I just figured things out by the context. Gordimer's world of a "liberal" white family hiding in their black servant's rural village and dealing with what was expected to be the end of apartheid was utterly absorbing, disturbing, and thought-provoking. I believe it still has lessons for the racisms still seen in today's world, more than thirty year...more

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Jan 02, 2010 Trisha rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book was interesting in its storyline - a wealthy white family is saved from a war by their African servant and he takes them to his village. The imagery and rhythm the author gives us to the village that they are taken to and live in is amazing.
But, I felt thrown into the story without some beginning information. the first 40 pages or so of the book I was still adjusting to the writing style and I'm sure I missed important stuff. The sentences are choppy and sometimes, in conversation, i h...more

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Jan 11, 2013 Elizabeth Huergo rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: great-literary-reads

For anyone interested in exploring Gordimer's fiction, this short novel serves as a good starting point, both in terms of style and theme. The story explores how tentative and arbitrary our sense of the normative actually is, and how much bigotry is bound up in our ideas of the normative, of how things "simply are" or "should be." What appears as a staid, white, solidly middle-class breaks down very quickly at the approach of military conflict. The skills that the white characters use to negotia...more

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Oct 28, 2011 Diane rated it 3 of 5 stars

July's People is a fictional account of a civil war in South Africa in the days before the end of apartheid. Society is reordered as blacks overthrow whites and violence is rampant. July is the name of a servant who rescues the white family for whom he has been working for a dozen years and brings them to his village. While they are grateful, the role reversal is difficult for Bam and his wife Maureen. July also seems to falter between his old world and the new. The racial tension is expressed b...more

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Sep 08, 2012 Mary rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: conversation-makers

I can't decide whether this is a racist book or not. It was written in 1980 and imagines the fall of Apartheid in South Africa in planes gunned down, Russian and Cuban puppetmasters and looting in the suburbs. But that's all removed and in the background. The real story is about how the white family comes to live in the village of their servant of 15 years. The children quickly "go native" while the parents are unable to renegotiate their new life, their in-betweenness as guests of their servant...more

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Jan 17, 2010 Mike rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

This was written in the early 80s during the apartheid era in South Africa. It imagines a civil war where a white couple and their children escape the city by the efforts of their black servant, July. He takes them back to his village and they experience the role reversal of relying on him for their survival. Pretty good on the emotions of the main characters, especially the white wife and the title character. But the writing style was hard to follow and I hated the ending. This probably would h...more

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Jun 16, 2010 Shelley rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I know, I know....I am supposed to have had some great cathartic experience from reading this book but it just did not happen. I don't particularly enjoy this style of writing. It seems disjointed and confusing and was like trying to read something written on a bumpy ride in the country. The story was okay, could see parts of where it was going. All in all, not enjoyable. I read it mainly because it was on my list of have to reads and I was very glad it was a short book and was very glad when I...more

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“you like to have some cup of tea?-July bent at the doorway and began that day for them as his kind has always done for their kind.” — 2 people liked it

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July's People

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